Buzz Archives: Education TF
Web Design Course Materials Licensed to W3C
As professional web builders we know that the web is constantly changing and our methods and practices must respond and adapt as well. There are so many new disciplines web professionals need to be know about, if not specizlized in, that weren’t around ten or even five years ago. It’s ...
By Christopher Schmitt | February 8th, 2012
- InterACT With Web Standards Book Released
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You may have noticed that the InterACT curriculum team recently released its first book: InterACT With Web Standards: A Holistic Approach to Web Design. It is the first book released by WaSP, and it directly ties into the work that the Education Task Force and other contributors have put into the courses in the InterACT curriculum.
By Chris Casciano | June 9th, 2010
- Six New Courses Added to the InterACT Curriculum
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Today, six more essential courses join the WaSP InterACT curriculum to help schools prepare their students for a career working on the Web.
By Aarron Walter | March 17th, 2010
- Introducing The Open Web Education Alliance
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The W3C recently announced an exciting new incubator group – The Open Web Education Alliance (OWEA) – that is certain to have a significant impact on helping web standards and best practices find their way into classrooms around the world.
By Aarron Walter | June 29th, 2009
- The Dawn of the Education Era
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We are proud to announce the WaSP InterAct Curriculum.
By Derek Featherstone | March 16th, 2009
- Shared Passion
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Something magical happens when you put a group of people that have a shared passion in the same room together. We're not just talking "excitement" here, either. We're talking passion -- the kind that keeps the fire in the belly burning; the kind that brings people together from far away ...
By Derek Featherstone | February 15th, 2009
- Announcing the WaSP Curriculum Framework
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Since March 2008, the WaSP Education Task Force has begun working on the WaSP Curriculum Framework, a collection of tools aiming to identify skill sets and competencies that aspiring Web professionals need to acquire to prepare them for their chosen careers, as well as resources that will help both educators and students.
By Steph Troeth | July 31st, 2008
- Curriculum Survey Results
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The Web Standards Project Education Task Force release the results of the 2007 Curriculum Survey.
By Rob Dickerson | July 28th, 2008
- EduTF Report Highlights Curriculum Project
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The WaSP Education Task Force (EduTF) report updates our activity, announces new members, and offers a report on a Web standards based Curriculum Project.
By Holly Marie Koltz | May 16th, 2008
- Education Task Force Curriculum Survey
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The Web Standards Project Education Task Force has created a curriculum survey and seeks input from educational professionals.
By Rob Dickerson | June 13th, 2007
- Advocacy in Education
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Hailing from Sweden, Lars Gunther, (relatively unknown to the Web guru world), takes on a sizable challenge and project to educate and advocate Web standards and curriculum change in his country’s educational system.
By Rob Dickerson | September 26th, 2006
- Accessibility Webcast on Plone
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Many developers in the education field are moving to open source content management software solutions for a variety of reasons, including: better standards/accessibility support, and a growing community and network of resources and help. The National Center on Disability & Access to Education recently hosted a webcast case study of one such solution, Plone.
By Holly Marie Koltz | September 2nd, 2006
- Back to School, Back to Reality
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As a student of Interactive Media Design at the Art Institute of Dallas, Texas, Blake Elshire learned CSS as part of his course, then discovered that not all students were quite as charmed by the technology as he was. He shares his thoughts and insights with WaSP EduTF.
By Rob Dickerson | August 28th, 2006
- On Quality Education
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“What college or university has a good program for Web Development (or Design)?” is a question frequently encountered on mailing lists, in forums, or in conversations with others. Many would like to know the answer.
By Holly Marie Koltz | May 24th, 2006
- Educating Web Professionals
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José Trudel instructs students with a focus on emerging technologies, standards, and skills; providing a strong foundation needed for today’s web professional.
By Rob Dickerson | May 22nd, 2006
- Notre Dame Web Group
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Lead Web developer Steve Smith and the University of Notre Dame Web Group tackle web standards and accessibility in original and exciting ways.
By Holly Marie Koltz | April 12th, 2006
- Queen's New Clothes
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WaSP eduTF interviews Tim Hannigan on Queen’s University’s conversion to Web standards.
By Steph Troeth | March 13th, 2006
- Kudos to Michigan State
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Michigan State University launched a redesign of its Web site, yesterday. Designed and developed with best practices that follow Web Standards and Web Accessibiity, the university Web site looks good and validates to the XHTML strict doctype. The redesign involved the teamwork of the MSU Libraries, Computing, and ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | February 28th, 2006
- Beyond New Professionalism
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In Molly's recent WaSP buzz, Web Standards and The New Professionalism she offers: Today, I want to express that I believe that this new professionalism means taking responsibility for the education of ourselves and each other, and ensuring that reversions like Disney Store UK never happen again. As part of the ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | November 16th, 2005
- WaSP Welcomes Sweden
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The WaSP Education Task Force welcomes Lars Gunther as our liaison to Sweden. Lars is working with Skolverket (Swedish Language), Sweden's national agency for schools, to encourage the adoption of Web standards in their curriculum reform project for Gymnasium (Swedish Language) scheduled for launch in 2007. Gymnasium is similar to ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | September 10th, 2005
- Harnessing the Power of User Groups
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Web sites in a university environment are, more often than not, micro-managed within individual faculties, colleges and administrative units. It stands to reason; each department is often responsible for their own content. However, it is a common problem that resources are not evenly spread across the different areas of an academic ...
By Steph Troeth | September 6th, 2005
- Frommelt: Pioneering Web Standards in Higher Ed
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One of the common hurdles in converting university and college sites to Web standards is due to a decentralized system of Web development within the organization. Daniel Frommelt is the World Wide Web Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin–Platteville and has been instrumental in converting their Web site to XHTML. However, ...
By Steph Troeth | August 1st, 2005
- WaSP Interviews Dr. Vito Evola
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The web has long since moved out of the IT and design departments and become a pervasive communications medium. As a result, top-notch minds from other disciplines have begun to help make it more robust, vibrant and just plain useful than before. Dr. Evola has one of these minds. He's applying ...
By Chris Kaminski | July 13th, 2005
- Hiram College Conversion
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A college website, multiple authors, and web standards — how can it be done? The WaSP Education Task Force asked Jonathan Linczak, webmaster and project lead, about the conversion of Hiram College to a standards-compliant website. Jon had been reading about and using standards on sites he had developed before he ...
By Holly Marie Koltz | June 2nd, 2005
The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.
Recent Buzz
Our Work Here is Done
By Aaron Gustafson | March 1st, 2013
Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality.
When The Web Standards Project (WaSP) formed in 1998, the web was the battleground in an ever-escalating war between two browser makers—Netscape and Microsoft—who were each taking turns “advancing” HTML to the point of collapse. You see, in an effort to one-up each other, the two browsers introduced new elements and new ways of manipulating web documents; this escalated to the point where their respective 4.0 versions were largely incompatible.
Realizing that this fragmentation would inevitably drive up the cost of building websites and ran the risk of denying users access to content and services they needed, Glenn Davis, George Olsen, and Jeffrey Zeldman co-founded WaSP and rallied an amazing group of web designers and developers to help them push back. The WaSP’s primary goal was getting browser makers to support the standards set forth by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
In 2001, with the browser wars largely over, WaSP began to shift its focus. While some members continued to work with browser vendors on improving their standards support, others began working closely with software makers like Macromedia to improve the quality of code being authored in tools such as Dreamweaver. And others began the hard slog of educating web designers and developers about the importance of using web standards, culminating in the creation of WaSP InterAct, a web curriculum framework which is now overseen by the W3C.
Thanks to the hard work of countless WaSP members and supporters (like you), Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of the web as an open, accessible, and universal community is largely the reality. While there is still work to be done, the sting of the WaSP is no longer necessary. And so it is time for us to close down The Web Standards Project.
Many (if not all) of us are continuing to work in the world of web standards, but our work is now largely outside the umbrella of WaSP. If you are interested in continuing to work on web standards-related projects along with us, we humbly suggest you follow these projects:
- A List Apart – The magazine “for people who make websites” is run by WaSP founder Jeffrey Zeldman and is a consistent source of forward-thinking articles and tutorials.
- HTML5 Doctor – A solid resource and discussion forum on all things HTML5, brought to you by Bruce Lawson and his team.
- W3C Community Groups – If you have a passion for a specific web technology, you can help make it better by participating in one (or more) community groups. In particular, you might be interested in one of these: Core Mobile Web Platform, Responsive Images, Web Education, and Web Media Text Tracks.
- WebPlatform.org – A fantastic web standards resource, providing up-to-date documentation, Q&As, tutorials & more. Chris Mills, Doug Schepers, and a number of other standards advocates are involved in this project.
- Web Standards Sherpa – An educational resource founded by WaSP which continues to operate under the leadership of Chris Casciano, Virginia DeBolt, Aaron Gustafson, and Emily Lewis.
- Web Standards + Small Business – An outreach project started by WaSP that educates small businesses about why they should care about web standards. This project is overseen by Aaron Gustafson.
The job’s not over, but instead of being the work of a small activist group, it’s a job for tens of thousands of developers who care about ensuring that the web remains a free, open, interoperable, and accessible competitor to native apps and closed eco-systems. It’s your job now, and we look forward to working with you, and wish you much success.
Nota bene: In the near future, we will be making a permanent, static archive of webstandards.org and some of our other resources like WaSP Interact to preserve them as a resource and to provide a record of our 15-year mission to improve the web.
Bruce Lawson and Steph Troeth contributed to this post.
Filed in WaSP Announcement | Comments (89)
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